Beth MurrayBeth Murray was born in Chicago on September 22, 1967. She grew up there and in Ohio until age nine, then moved to Lake Villa, Illinois, where she lived until she graduated from college. She received her BA in Studio Art from Carleton College and her MFA in Photography from the University of Illinois in Chicago. After moving to the Bay Area in the 1990s, Beth refocused her creative practice on poetry and became active in the small press poetry community there. Beth's creative work was deeply entwined with her interests in alternative healing, spirituality, and the natural world. Beth completed her training to become a Certified Classical Homeopath at the Pacific Academy of Homeopathy and maintained a practice treating people as well as animals, ranging from domestic pets to African Veldt animals at the Oakland Zoo, for ten years. Her work with animals was especially important to her, and helped to advance the acceptance of homeopathy in veterinary care. Beth also led meditation groups and was involved in Constellation work with other Bay Area healers. She was an avid hiker, open-water swimmer, and cross-country skier, and held a second degree black belt in Aikido, which she practiced for over 20 years.

Beth is the author of several chapbooks, including 12 Horrors (Belladonna*), HOPE ETERNITY SEEN ON THE HIP OF A RABBIT (A+ bend) and The Night's Night (Noemi Press), and the book-length poem The Island (Second Story Books). She began writing CANCER ANGEL shortly after she was diagnosed with breast cancer in June of 2011. In 2013 Beth participated in the Poetics of Healing conference in Berkeley, California, Vital Forms: Healing and the Arts of Crisis, where she performed an excerpt from CANCER ANGEL. Her experience with illness is also chronicled in her blog Healing My Cancer.

In her writing, as in her life, Beth practiced spiritual inquiry grounded in deep awareness of the body. In CANCER ANGEL she found healing and epiphany even in the trauma of illness. She died on Wednesday, October 8, 2014 from metastatic breast cancer in her home in Midpines, California, under a full moon. Read More Read Less